Mar 2/3 – Blog #7
For Immanuel Kant, there is two forms of duty based ethics, characterized into imperatives, the hypothetical and the categorical. He states that not everything good is classified as pleasure, meaning that if helping someone in need does not produce pleasure of some sort, then it is unnecessary to act on. “If a good will is a good without qualification, then it is just as good in a foolish person that causes much harm while meaning to do well as it is in a person that succeeds.” Kant believes that one should base the moral evaluation of acts solely on the goodness of their consequences, which in turn leads him to come up with the hypothetical and the categorical.
The hypothetical states that “the practical necessity of a possible action as means to something else that is willed.” This means that the action is not necessarily duty-based, but rather used as a means to something done out of good will. The categorical on the other hand, entails the more certain aspects of will based ethics. It represents “an action as objectively necessary in itself apart from its relation to a further end.” So in other words, it mandates that the action is completed in order to fulfill a specific end that achieves something higher than that which is currently present. Essentially, Kant is saying that everything must be done out of good will, but only when necessary, must that other second purpose be served(hypothetically or categorically). These decisions that follow the imperative guidelines can be characterized by the degree of inclination we display in making a decision.
Inclination defined by Kant, is “the dependence of the faculty of desire on sensations.” It is anything that stems from our sensible nature and anything that opposes our rationality. In other words, it is the devil on our shoulder convincing us to do the wrong thing. Inclination states that this is because of our desire to feel any number of sensations; sex, drugs, gluttony; anything that is a “guilty pleasure.” It is because of this inclination that we make morally wrong decisions, but by definition, it is our duty to resist these desires and make the right decision, whether it be hypothetical or categorical. This is the epitome of duty-based ethics and is one of the most commonly practiced form of ethics today.
Read more on Kant’s categorical imperative here.
Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bIys6JoEDw
403 words.
Mind of Lucca 